“Do you think I can stay and become nothing to you? Do you think I’m an automaton? -a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I’m poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulled and heartless? You think wrong!”
“remember two things: i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period; ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. the present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have you cannot lose.”
“what we do now echoes in eternity.”
"thou must be like a promontory of the sea, against which though the waves beat continually, yet it both itself stands, and about it are those swelling waves stilled and quieted."
“the blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.”
“the first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. the second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
“reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
“your days are numbered. use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. if you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.”
“whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: what fault of mine most nearly resembles the one i am about to criticize?”
“death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.”
"within a very little while, thou wilt be either ashes, or a sceletum; and a name perchance; and perchance, not so much as a name. and what is that but an empty sound, and a rebounding echo? those things which in this life are dearest but vain, putrid, contemptible. tho most weighty and serious, if rightly esteemed, but as puppies, biting one another: or untoward children, now laughing and then crying. as for
'I understand you only too well...' I said. 'That passivity in me has been the core of it all, the real evil. That weakness, that refusal to compromise a fractured and stupid morality, that awful pride! For that, I let myself become the thing I am, when I knew it was wrong.'
My husband never wanted to be around me- that was obvious! Her eyes brimmed over as she struggled on. Neither did my father...What is it in me? Why do they all feel that way about me? What am I doing wrong?
Sayfa 5
Where is his wife?
“Where is Aelin.”
There was pure panic, too—pure panic as Whitethorn saw the blood, the
scattered blades, and the shirt.
“Where is Aelin.”
What had he done, what had he done—
Pain sliced Lorcan’s neck, warm blood dribbled down his throat, his
chest.
Rowan hissed, “Where is my wife?”
Lorcan swayed where he knelt.
Wife.
Wife.
“Oh, gods,” Elide sobbed as she overheard, the words carrying the
sound of Lorcan’s own fractured heart. “Oh, gods …”
And for the first time in centuries, Lorcan wept.
Rowan dug the dagger deeper into Lorcan’s neck, even as tears slid
down Lorcan’s face.
What that woman had done …
Aelin had known. That Lorcan had betrayed her and summoned Maeve
here. That she had been living on borrowed time.
And she had married Whitethorn … so Terrasen could have a king.
Perhaps had been spurred into action because she knew Lorcan had already
betrayed her, that Maeve was coming …
And Lorcan had not helped her.
Whitethorn’s wife.
His mate.
Aelin had let them whip and chain her, had gone willingly with Maeve,
so Elide didn’t enter Cairn’s clutches. And it had been just as much a
sacrifice for Elide as it had been a gift to him.
She had bowed to Maeve.
For Elide.
To Celena
Young, and yet her face … It was an ancient face, wary and cunning and
limned with power. Beautiful, with the sun-kissed skin, the vibrant
turquoise eyes. Turquoise eyes, with a core of gold around the pupil.
Ashryver eyes.
The same as the golden-haired, handsome man who came up beside her,
muscled body tense as he assessed whether he’d need to spill blood, a bow
dangling from his hand.
Two sides of the same golden coin.
Aelin. Aedion.
They were both staring at her with those Ashryver eyes.
Aelin blinked. And her golden face crumpled as she said, “Are you
Elide?”
It was all Elide could do to nod. Lorcan was taut as a bowstring, his
body still half angled over her.
Aelin strode closer, eyes never leaving Elide’s face. Young—she felt so
young compared to the woman who approached. There were scars all over
Aelin’s hands, along her neck, around her wrists … where shackles had
been.
Aelin slid to her knees not a foot away, and it occurred to Elide that she
should be bowing, head to the dirt—
“You look … so much like your mother,” Aelin said, her voice cracking.
Aedion silently knelt, putting a broad hand on Aelin’s shoulder.
Her mother, who had gone down swinging, who had died fighting so
this woman could live—
“I’m sorry,” Aelin said, shoulders curving inward, head dropping low as
tears slid down her flushed cheeks. “I’m so sorry.” How many years had
those words been locked up?
Elide’s arm ached, but it didn’t stop her from touching Aelin’s hand,
clenched in her lap.
Touching that tanned, scarred hand. Warm, sticky skin met her